Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

It depends on what business you're in and what your objectives are.

Depending on your price elasticity, you could try increasing or decreasing price. But that's just one of many marketing levers you can try to develop revenue. There are dozens of others.

Hope this helps. I think you're asking for a definition of "developing revenues," right?

Dear Omarfdawood,

By "develop" revenuse I'm presuming you mean "increase".

There are several ways you might want to address this, not least of which is by offering outstanding value and by increasing the loyalty of the customers you already have.

I'm suggesting this because it will give you greater ROI and cost you less per person to market to someone you already have a relationship with than it will to acquire any new customers.

With new people you have to begin from scratch, which means it cold be months before you see any return on your initial outlay, which in and of itself isn't great for cash flow.

It's not always necessary, or advisable to increase current
prices, particularly if it's been some time since you last addressed fees and charges. But what can pay off handsomely (if it's done right) is the introduction of additional premium services for which your current customers pay a monthly access fee.

Essentially, it's revenue continuity and it works like this:

Let's say you have 5,000 people on your mailing list. By offering
a free report or something of value up front you create instant potential appeal, particularly if your offer is connected with a customer's deeply felt need.

You offer this product either for free, or for a tiny cost to cover postage and packing (if it's a tangible report that can be mailed).
To instill the value your promotional copy MUST talk about you offering customer's the chance to try your $299 product free for the next 14 days, during which time they'll discover that your product is the best solution ever to the issue of their this, that, and the other, ABC problem. If they're not totally satisfied before their trial expires, all they have to do is call your toll free number or reason to a given e-mail address and their account will be terminated and they'll owe nothing ... AND ... they can keep the thingy you've sent them as a token of your thanks and appreciation.

But your copy also needs to include the fact that at the end of the trial period, they'll be automatically subscribed to your continuity program for $X per month until the cancel.

And it's here where you'll generate your revenue by offering exclusive content for (i dunno ... $27 per month?), for which you'll supply audio interviews with known and respected industry leaders, either as a downloadable files, or via mail as a CD.

When you do this you create an instant product line that offers instant value and the feeling of having inside information.

Exclusivity and scarcity in cases like this are great incentives for people to sign up. And the low cost (to you) but high perceived value (to your customers) is the bait to pull people into your marketing funnel. Book of the month clubs do this brilliantly.
And Guthy-Renker did this with a line of well-known skin care products that in 36 months went from zero revenues to being a near level competitor with Mary Kay.

But it's possible to go one step further in terms of revenue generation here by adding different levels of membership (such
as Gold, Diamond, and Platinum levels) all of which have increasing price points in exchange for more, more, more, and onto which you add even greater value with the inclusion of printed transcripts, access to an online forum, monthly webinars or video seminars that offer additional premium content that's available nowhere else.

The potential for huge amounts of monthly revenue with a program like this is huge and i hope this has given you food for thought.

For more on subjects such as this, visit my website. Click on my name
at the top of this post, visit my website, and sign up for FREE monthly content. And yes, that's FREE content :).

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA